ARTICLES ABOUT INCINERATOR BY DATE - PAGE 5

A citizens' group backed by high-powered lawyers including former New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio sued Keystone Cement Co. yesterday over "numerous environmental violations" at the company's East Allen Township plant. In the federal suit, the newly formed group alleges a history of environmental abuses that includes violations of state limits on the amount of hazardous waste the plant burns and unsafe disposal methods for dust residue from the kilns. The complaints are not new, and a Keystone vice president suggested that the suit is part of a campaign by the incinerator industry to take waste-burning business away from Keystone and other cement makers.

Keystone Cement Co. may keep burning some hazardous waste as fuel for its East Allen Township plant, but if managers want to burn at a higher rate, they'll have to prove first that neighbors won't be in jeopardy. The state Department of Environmental Resources gave Keystone final approval yesterday on operating permits that leave intact how much waste can be burned at the plant, while significantly tightening other controls -- including emission limits. Keystone did not get the expanded permits managers wanted to burn 50 percent more waste than they do now and to burn a greater variety of wastes.

Easton City Council decided last night not to wait until a rumor it heard about an incinerator starting up in Glendon becomes a fact. The members opted to send a letter to its legislators letting them know they oppose such a project. Councilman Burns Bamford said the South Side Civic Association reported the rumor at its June meeting, saying the plant, proposed by Joseph Reibman near Glendon's border with the city, might become an issue again. Several years ago Reibman received state Department of Environmental Resources approval to operate the incinerator.

To the Editor: Rep. Bob Freeman is to be commended both for meeting with Keystone Cement Co. officials and for his sponsorship of House Bill 443, which would allow cement kilns to burn flammable hazardous waste but restrict them from burning more toxic wastes. Pennsylvania needs more public officials willing to take on the big polluters. Burning hazardous waste is not safe, and current regulations are inadequate to protect public health and the environment. There is such unanimous agreement on this point that the hazardous waste burner lobby -- which represents both hazardous waste burning cement and incinerator companies -- has voluntarily proposed new federal emissions standards that have significantly stricter heavy metal and dioxin limits than the current regulations under which Keystone operates.

Commonwealth Court took another crack yesterday at Glendon Energy Co.'s eight-year battle to bring a waste incinerator to the borough. Judges Dan R. Pellegrini and James R. Kelly and Bucks County Senior Judge George T. Kelton heard legal arguments from attorneys from the company and the borough on the company's appeal of a ruling last year by Northampton County Judge William F. Moran. Moran upheld the borough's June 1992 refusal to grant a conditional permit to build the proposed incinerator, whose 1987 approval was later revoked because of changes in borough zoning regulations.

Stepping outside her own congressional district, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky yesterday introduced legislation to regulate the burning of hazardous waste in cement kilns. The Montgomery County Democrat's bill targets 27 such kilns nationwide, including the Keystone Cement Co. plant in Northampton County and another northwest of Pittsburgh. An industry group immediately denounced the measure as misguided and unnecessary. "We wish that the congresswoman had talked to representatives of the cement industry first," said Martha Lindauer, director of public affairs for the The Cement Kiln Recycling Coalition, Washington, D.C. But a rival organization of companies looking to burn toxic material themselves -- including affiliates of Union Pacific Corp.

State Senate candidate Robert Freeman stood in the yard of the George Wolfe Elementary School in Bath yesterday and excoriated Keystone Cement Co. for burning hazardous waste a half-mile away. Freeman, a Democrat who has represented Easton in the state House for the past decade, summoned reporters to the school to tout two bills he introduced last year to ban hazardous waste burning in cement kilns and require companies to file hazardous waste reduction plans with the state Department of Environmental Resources every five years.

With three successful plants across the Northeast, Air Products and Chemicals of Trexlertown won't try to build a trash-to-energy plant in its own back yard until a majority of Lehigh Valley residents show support for one, a company vice president told the Bethlehem Rotary Wednesday. Wayne Hinman, vice president of Air Products' joint venture with trash hauler Browning Ferris Inc., said most communities reject trash incinerators until they face a crisis and have no other alternatives.

A building permit issued in 1991 for a soil incinerator lapsed because construction did not begin within six months, a lawyer representing East Penn Township argued yesterday in Carbon County Court. But Edward McKarski of Bethlehem, the lawyer for East Penn Recycling Inc., said township supervisors told the company at a public meeting it would have up to two years to begin building. "Was that put in writing?" Judge Richard Webb asked McKarski. "No," McKarski replied, saying that minutes from the township meeting were vague and didn't include the statement.

Montgomery County residents and businesses are paying more than necessary for trash disposal because of a monopoly created by the county for disposal sites a few years ago. The county's northern waste authority has begun preparations to revoke the license of one trash hauler, J.P. Mascaro & Sons of Harleysville, that is defying the monopoly and possibly violating a county law. But the county commissioners have put those preparations on hold and...